shop talk

Should be: cleaning house and brining turkey breast.

Am: updating wedding budget and guest list.

It is NOVEMBER, friends. That's six months away from May, which is the month in which we're going to be married. When we'll have 200-ish of our nearest and dearest here to celebrate with us. Martha Stewart Weddings provides many helpful hints (okay, they're pretty strident) about what we should have accomplished by now in the planning process, but I'm feeling pretty good about it all.

If you were wondering, I've managed to restrain myself from marching back into B. Hughes and stealing the beloved Vera gown. That's just not meant to be. But I am going to go buy that veil that I love, and that's a start. I'm meeting an amazing dress designer on Thursday to see sketches of the dream dress that I brought to her, and to get a price quote, which is hands-down the most nerve wracking aspect of this entire wedding process so far. I *really* want to work with this girl, and if she's too expensive (why wouldn't she be? She's remarkable!) it's going to break my heart. And put me back to square one in regards to The Dress, which is the only thing that I don't have all planned out and lined up. Caterer? Check. Decorations? I have heaps of ideas that are entirely do-it-ourselves. Honeymoon? Ireland, did I tell you?! Now if I can just figure out what I'm going to wear down the aisle (and how I'm going to afford it), I'll sleep easy until the new year.

Sunday morning I'm having a handful of my Most Helpful ladies over for brunch to start talking about things like paper flowers and mason jars. I feel excited every time I think about this wedding, which is all the time. Truthfully, if I talked about wedding thoughts as often as I think them, I would probably have alienated everyone I love and lost Austin forever. I swear, I'm not losing sight of the whole point here: he'll be my husband, which is a greater honor than I could ever hope for. And the party is going to be a night we'll always remember, nothing more or less.

P.S. I can NOT get into a writing groove yet. Is this the most boring post ever? Where are my words?

tonight I...

a. made dinner and had the kitchen mostly clean in under an hour (Taco Salad from the 30 Minute Cookbook, god bless it)

b. had my first two At Bats of my entire life. Somewhere my father weeps with pride, despite my lifetime 0.00 batting average.

c. had a fierce argument with an impassioned gay man regarding my anti-animal movie stance.

d. didn't even peek at the inbox to inspect the coming hellstorm that is the day after Billing Run. I know what's coming. I'm ready.

Feast or famine

Once again, I'm undertaking the self-torture that is NaBloPoMo. That's right. I neglect the bloggings for almost three months and then decide to blog daily for the next thirty. The last time I did this, I complained the whole time about how November is such a busy month and who has time to find interesting things to write about every day? The answer: not me. But here we go, anyway.

And just to prove my point, that's all I've got for tonight. My future husband is unapologetically snoring away next to me, after a long day of football drinking. He didn't even finish the big dinner I pulled together (baked linguine, honey-roasted carrots, asparagus with parmesan butter and garlic bread) or the episode of Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth (Reichl). I blame Jon Burr and his nefarious influences for sending Austin home in such a state.

I'm uploading Halloween pics and videos as we speak. Expect to see some extended video of Ali the Dancing PeeWee shaking what her momma gave her. And John "Tape Monster" Baldwin, in a costume that was probably more conceptually successful than in actuality. I don't envy him the cleanup.

Hot damn, y'all. It's November!

fine, then.

On Friday, Casey and I went to B. Hughes for the Vera Wang trunk show. I figure I have pretty limited opportunities to try on gowns created by the most famous wedding dress designer on the planet. In a million years, I could never justify spending that kind of money on a single item of clothing that will only be worn once. But after the first handful of taffeta and tulle, I can completely understand the appeal.

I suppose I shouldn't have even put myself in this position, but of course I fell madly in love with a $5000 ballgown with a bubble skirt and pintucked strapless bodice. It was breathtaking. All the ladies in the shop gasped when I came out of the dressing room, and Casey got weepy while I was standing in front of the mirror admiring the bell-sway of the skirt and the beautiful shape of the silhouette. I even tried on a simple flyaway veil that couldn't have been prettier.

I told the book club girls about it yesterday, and it was decided that we should host a topless bake sale to fund my Dream Dress. Or create the long-discussed Book Club Girl Pinup Calendar. Or start borrowing $5 or $10 from every single person I know. Their enthusiasm and conviction made it much too easy to imagine myself draped in Vera on May 22. Oh dear...

Yesterday we hosted Badness and Redbeard's Tennessee Wedding Shindig, which was an outright success, largely because of the astonishingly cool and breezy weather. And all that amazing food... This afternoon we took all three dogs to the dog park again, which was hilarious and went quite well. Tonight I'm making baked spaghetti and onion-cheese bread, courtesy of the green Lady and Sons cookbook. Thursday is the Cheatham County Fair Demolition Derby, about which I am unreasonably excited. As usual.

More wedding-planning details soon. Which will hopefully not involve me deciding to convert our entire catering budget into a Vera Wang hedge fund...

belatedly stolen from Kim

This pretty much keeps me at a solid level of Ecstatically Happy:



And then I found this tribute, linked from somewhere in the Summer Mix Series. It's kind of a tribute to a tribute, technically, and the video skipped sometimes when I watched it earlier on Vimeo, but maybe it won't with the embed:

phoenix - lisztomania *brooklyn pack mashup* from ian parker on Vimeo.

Yay. That's a song to listen to over and over, anyway.

why do I always do this?

Gah! I wait so long between posts and then there is too much to say. Let's do the bullet point version of an update:

• Wedding date: moved. Forward one week due to scheduling difficulties with the Bicentennial Mall. So now we're looking at May 22, which I'm told is going to guarantee us a long and happy marriage. So there.
  
• Seattle: gorgeous. We couldn't have had better weather or a more beautiful rental house. With a Viking range and subzero fridge, believe it. We bought stunning produce at Pike Place, cooked up a storm, played lots of cards, took over the jukebox at a bar in the tiny town of Manchester, and had an amazing meal of tapas at Black Bottle in Belltown. I got to catch the Jim Henson exhibit AND the Hatch exhibit at EMP; both were fantastic and the Hatch show made me miss my old friend Huey. Oh, and we spent a lot of time on ferry boats. I never thought I'd be on a boat.
  
• Alaska: awesome. I'm not really sure if I could live there, what with all their issues with day and night and the proper scheduling of each, but the scenery couldn't have been more beautiful. We saw a small black bear and were woken up by a 5.4 strength earthquake. The Great Wedding Adventure came off without a hitch and it was an absolute honor to be involved and to finally get to meet Agnes's big crazy family, especially Peter, who I feel like I've known for years.
  
• I will say this: air travel = sucks. I swear. It's never going to be any better. We had the most absurd amount of drama getting on a direct flight from Seattle into Anchorage (and avoid a scheduled 5-hour layover in Juneau). We also took a red-eye home from Anchorage to Chicago and, despite being heavily medicated, it was just terrible. Neither of us slept at all (thanks to some well-timed squalling infants); by the time we got home at 1 pm we collapsed in a four hour nap. I have written red-eye flights off of my list of possible travel solutions for the future. At least when flying coach.
  
• Bowling: rocks. We've been participating in the Emma bowling league, and a few weeks ago I bowled a career-high 156. How about that?! It almost feels like exercise. But in a fun way.
  
• ELO night: insert enthusiastic hyperbole here. How I Became the Bomb and Kindercastle joined up with a seven piece string section to perform Electric Light Orchestra's double album opus Out of the Blue, one night only at the Mercy Lounge. And these are both extremely talented bands in their own right, but if they decided to take this (daunting and time consuming) act on the road, they'd be INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTARS, I tell you. I kept looking around at the crowd and everyone was smiling the *whole* time. Tell me the last time you saw a rock show in Nashville where you could say the same...
• Fourth of July: vaguely apocalyptic. Casey and I sucked up an uncharacteristic bout of nerves and ventured back into Ashland City for a visit with our oldest friends that turned out to be simply delightful. Then we rode back into town ready to hit the baseball game and were subverted by absolutely ridiculous weather. Monsoonish rainstorms, thunder and lightning, the whole bit. I seriously can't remember ever being rained out of Fourth of July. We didn't see any fireworks, despite having planned to see both the downtown extravaganza and the Sounds blastoff. Weird and boo. The whole situation resulted in us reminiscing about happier Fourths of July in years past, particularly those spent out at the Paine Family Farm, and then I got really sad about missing Jenny and Patrick.
  
• Bridgey: escape artist. After the Epic Independence Day Fail, we arrived home to discover Bridgette, running around a neighbor's yard, soaked and completely freaked out. We assumed that the fireworks + storm had somehow worked her into such a frenzy that she jumped the fence without realizing what was happening. We dried her off, put her and the others to bed, and were most disappointed when she spent all of Sunday showing off her new fence-climbing skill. That's right. Bridgette, the GOOD one, the shy, well-behaved, slightly backwards brown dog has learned to scale chain-link like a monkey. We've temporarily curbed the efforts by wrapping a tarp over the top of the gate, therefore giving her nothing to claw onto, but our eventual (and hopeful) solution involves rabbit wire and hard labor this weekend. Good GRIEF.
• Hot Rod: ridiculous. Austin wakes up every morning and watches part of the Andy Samberg movie Hot Rod, about a quixotic pseudo-stuntman and his loony cast of surrounding characters. He just watches a bit and then stops it and picks it back up again the next morning, laughing like a little kid the whole time. I think it's his new Wet Hot American Summer, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.
• MJ: just sad. I've had this whole defense of Michael Jackson's character and skewering of the media lined up in my head for a week now, but mostly it's been said and it's kind of past the point of relevancy. But Jenny made me smile when she said that her first instinct when she heard the news of his death was to call our cousin Josh and see how he was coping.
  

There, how was that for the Greatest Hits recap version? I think we're all caught up to speed now. I have got to spend more time blogging and less time on Facebook. Can that be a mid-New-year resolution?

never been better

Tonight I'm knocking around the house, solo for a little while. Austin's playing FIFA Soccer with JB. I had planned to spend the alone time working on the filing drawers in the desk in the office I excavated yesterday. Instead I poked around online, played a game, read some educational wedding-related articles. Then I straightened up the house, put away the remnants of our crackers-and-soda snack from this afternoon, and got out the ingredients for tonight's Mexican pineapple salad. And I realized, while I was moving around the house, going through mindless motions, I was smiling the whole time.

I don't talk about religion, on here or anywhere. I'm not a subscriber of any specific doctrine. We don't go to church, and we don't follow any scriptures. I don't have astral convictions, and I don't miss them. But the only word I can find to describe this feeling, this day, this place I'm at in my life, is blessed. I am saturated by blessings. It washes over me, so many times a day, and I wish there was a better way to express my gratitude.

I love our home. We cleaned it yesterday, got the office near to full function, and made some decorating progress. It is safe and warm and comfortable when it's filled with girls, sprawled on the couch with popcorn and ice cream, or when it's just us and our pets, on quiet tv afternoons, or when it's just me and my iTunes. There literally isn't a day that goes by that I don't think how utterly lucky we are that we found *this* house. It felt like an arduous search, and it turned out exactly right.

I love my job. One of the bigger wedding-related dilemmas I've faced (as with every bride in the history of the world, I know) has been the size of the guest list. And this is complicated by the fact that I have 70+ coworkers who are also friends who I can't imagine not celebrating with. It's probably not going to be realistic to invite every Emma staffer plus one, but right now I'm doing my best to find a way to include as many as we can. I think about the very best days at Hatch, when we all felt like a productive family full of friends, and that's how Emma is too. I love it when I make a breakthrough on a collaborative project, I love it when I've finished processing the daily check run, I love it when the power goes out and I wind up laying on the carpet of the second floor lounge doing half-assed pilates with Brooks and Rami and Rachael's puppy. I think I've said this before, but you don't realize how much of your self-esteem is caught up in the work week until you find a job that fulfills you.

I love our pets. We both do, equally, with an unreasonable fervor. We're those crazy pet people and aren't remotely ashamed. Digby is getting closer and closer to being a good dog, and Bridgette is such a sweet girl. We had a brushing session on the back patio last weekend (shedding time is definitely here) and they were both just inhaling the affection and attention. Mackenzie is completely back to her old self, running the house with her larger-than-life attitude and making sure she gets quality time with us before bed every night. Corvinius is, well, an oddball, but a loveable one, and spent a large portion of this afternoon rubbing his face on the corner of my computer screen over. and over. and over again. Oh buddy. And look, we don't like to play favorites with our pets. But every single day, Mischa and Charlie Murphy fill us up with love. Mischa got a new toy today, and she's currently sacked out on her spot at the end of the couch with this new red stuffy wrapped in her arms like a woobie. I just want to hold her so tight. Charlie Murphy loves weekends, particularly couch weekends like today, and the absolute peace and joy he spreads when he's sleeping leaned up against my lap... it's just the best.

I love my friends. Book club friends, work friends, people who don't fall in either category (there aren't many...), I can't get over the support network that surrounds me. I spent a lot of my adolescence thinking of myself as not a "girlfriend" kind of girl, and I'm so happy that I was totally wrong about that. We threw a surprise bachelorette party for Agnes last night, and the house was about to burst from all the girlie love. Lisa and Jenny were missed, but otherwise it couldn't have gone better and I was so glad we could all spend sweet time with Agnes before she takes off for the Great Alaskan Wedding Adventure.

I love my family. The reason I didn't think of myself as a "girlfriend" kind of girl was, obviously, because I have the best built-in girlfriends on the planet, my sisters. We talk every day and nothing feels complete unless it is shared with them. I'm so glad that we live close enough to my dad that we can just have low-key evenings of ceiling fan installation and (really good) chicken wings with him and Lynn. We're so lucky to have them both nearby. I miss my big crazy California family so badly, and one of my absolute favorite things to imagine about our wedding is having them all here together again. And I am just chomping at the bit to get to Seattle (next weekend!) and give my Mom one gigantic hug, followed by a series of smaller ones. It's been almost a year since we've seen her and I can't wait to spend a week on the lake with her and Kam (and Casey and Trent and a deck of cards!).

And of course you knew this was where I was going, but I love Austin. I'm not going to detail all the reasons that he's the man I'm going to marry (I've done that before and certainly will again) but the place where we are in our life together is just especially good right now. I am excited to see him EVERY DAY. How silly is that? I start to feel restless and shifty if it's been more than a couple of hours since I've checked in with him (thanks to IM and texting for completely spoiling me by having my fiance´ available to me at all times). We're on the same page about all these major decisions we've made in the past year and will be making in the next year. We're not exactly wealthy, but it's been a long while since we've had to look at anything and say, from a financial standpoint, "How are we going to make this work?" We carpool almost every day and talk about the stories we hear on NPR. If it sounds idyllic, it is. I can't think of an aspect of my life that isn't made better by just having him with me. We don't have to do everything together (see: FIFA Soccer) but when I'm walking around our house by myself, smiling, it's mostly because of him.